Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek) Read online

  He hugged her again and was out the door. It wasn’t two minutes later her phone sounded—she had it programmed to play “Rule, Britannia!”—and she saw it was Carson again. Strange, but she’d actually hoped it was Grant, which was ridiculous since he’d just left.

  “Carson, yes, I’m here.”

  “Where in hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick. No weddings today to make you turn off your cell, right?”

  “You won’t believe what happened. I went with Grant Mason to a local artist’s house to commission a carving and we found the man dead—with his skull crushed. And by his own carving—he uses tree trunks—which had the Adena pipe figure on it, like he was psychic that was what I’d order—that and a Beastmaster mask.”

  “What? Slow down. Unbelievable! A freak accident?”

  “His place had been ransacked when his wife was away. She has an alibi—more or less—so it must have been thieves.”

  “I can’t believe you got yourself into that. Are you all right? Is it safe for you to be staying there alone at your sister’s place, with lunatics like that loose?”

  “I’m not afraid to be out here.”

  “Anyone you could stay with?”

  “Carson, I haven’t lived here for years and I was young when I left, but I’ll be fine. It might have been a big happy time for my father to be back here seeing old friends, but not me, so I don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

  “So how did that go—with your father?”

  “Not that well—for me, anyway. I remember what he was like, though Tess and Char really don’t.”

  “That’s my Kate. A mind like a steel trap.”

  “But I’m sorry I didn’t ask about how your talk went. Things got so intense here—”

  “Really? Have you convinced Grant Mason to let you excavate Mason Mound yet?”

  “I’m working on it, but I can’t push. Besides, the murdered man was a good friend of his, and Grant recently had another personal setback.”

  “That might make him more vulnerable.”

  “You sound like you’re pushing me into his arms.”

  “My darling, you’re the one who is desperate for links, so link away—within reason. I still think you and I could have a brilliant future. And proving the prehistoric Europe-America link could be our big break.”

  They chatted about his talk at the Smithsonian. She realized it was so unlike him not to speak about himself first. But then, it wasn’t every day that a former research assistant and protégée of Dr. Carson Cantrell found a recently deceased corpse instead of an ancient one.

  7

  For once the floor of the Mason Lumber Mill was quiet. Grant stood on the metal stairs to his office so the staff gathered around could see and hear him. Yesterday, he’d shared details with Brad and Todd about what had happened to Paul and that it wasn’t clear if it was an accident, suicide—or even murder. Todd had taken the news badly and was very emotional; Brad was much more stoic. Grant knew people processed grief in their own ways. Their group of five friends was permanently splintered. Gabe, of course, would be back in two weeks, but Grant had decided to let him enjoy his honeymoon. He’d learn the terrible news about Paul soon enough.

  “I know you’ve all heard what happened to Paul Kettering yesterday,” Grant told the gathered men and women. “It’s hit the news, and Deputy Miller tells me a reporter from the Chillicothe Gazette is asking questions around town. Since many of you knew Paul, I just wanted to say a word. He is a great loss to me, to us, to the wider community and, of course, to his wife, Nadine. It’s possible the reporter or others may be asking questions, and I’m aware rumors are floating around. Please refer questions to me, since I was one of the ones who discovered his body.”

  Grant’s stomach cramped as he went on to explain that the funeral would be Wednesday or Thursday, as soon as the coroner released the body, and the mill would close so all could attend. As everyone returned to work, Grant realized he didn’t see Brad in the crowd. Brad had given him the idea he had been at the mill on Sunday afternoon, helping Todd with inventory since they’d been at the wedding most of Saturday. He’d mentioned that Todd had gone home for a couple of hours. But Grant had noticed this morning that not much of the inventory had been done. He’d inadvertently given Jace Miller alibis for Brad and Todd when he didn’t know enough about where they had been.

  He tried to avoid heart-to-hearts with Brad since he was so touchy, but he’d better talk to him again about when Todd left and whether Brad was here the whole time. And he wouldn’t talk to them together. Grant knew Brad put Todd on edge, so he had to be sure his brother wasn’t trying to cleverly, carefully sabotage Todd to get his foreman job.

  Lost in thought, he started up the stairs toward his office. Paul was desperate for money. Was he the second one in their once-youthful band of brothers who might have been desperate enough to sell his Adena artifact? It had really shaken Grant that Brad had threatened to do the same.

  Gabe had been away that fateful weekend years ago when the other four boys crawled through the old entry to the mound. No way would Gabe approve of years of a cover-up, even if it had started as a youthful mistake. They’d never told him, especially since his dad was the sheriff then. Grant, as head of their pals and the older of the Mason boys, had had first choice of the awesome things they’d seen in the dim depths of the mound, under the timbered roof that held the earth above their heads. He had picked the weird antlered mask Kate had called the Beastmaster, one of the links she was evidently looking for. Brad, choosing next, had taken a large arrowhead, Todd an ax head and Paul the eagle pendant.

  Cutting their fingers with the arrowhead and mingling their blood, they had sworn a secret pact to hide the objects and never tell another soul what they’d done. But Grant had been spooked about it ever since, fearing they’d robbed the dead. He’d read a book once about how the people who’d entered King Tut’s tomb in Egypt had been cursed for disturbing the dead and had died strange deaths themselves. And he’d never been able to forget that the bodies interred in Mason Mound, the ones evidently guarding the more decked-out corpses, all had their skulls smashed in—just like Paul.

  * * *

  Although Kate wished she was measuring Mason Mound instead of this one down by Cold Creek, it would give her comparison data when she finally did get to the mound on Grant’s property. She had a feeling that Mason Mound was special. As far as anyone knew, it had never been excavated as this one had been. Also, Mason Mound was not near a stream, lake or river, which was unusual. This one wasn’t far from the falls that had been the backdrop for Tess’s wedding.

  Kate tried to picture the newlyweds on their honeymoon. The luxury barge on the Loire, drifting through green, glorious France. Gabe had wanted something very different from what either of them had ever done, and he’d found it, all right.

  Today Kate was using her notes and the crude map she’d made from an original, amateur Falls County map she’d found filed in the depths of the Ohio Historical Society archives. She’d been recording her measurements of the mound’s circumference. When she’d noticed a measuring wheel in the old garage behind Tess’s house, she’d asked if she could borrow it instead of just pacing off the ground. The long handle with its small wheel at the end was used for measuring skid marks in accidents, Tess had said. Gabe now had a more modern version, so he’d left it with other goods they were storing until the remodeling of their new house was done.

  “This has got to be similar to the size of Grant’s mound,” she said aloud. “Bodies and artifacts were found here, so maybe there are some in his, too.”

  She knew this mound had caved in from the top when the upright logs or the roof timbers they supported had rotted. Could it be that Grant’s mound, being farther from a water source and underground seepage or even humidity, had not caved in? Could it be intact? She had
to get up to the top of Mason Mound, see if there were any signs of a cave-in. But she’d have to be careful or she could start an earth slide or fall right through.

  She cautiously climbed this mound and noted where the top of it had settled. She’d read a pioneer-era report written in a fancy, delicate hand that relics and bone fragments had been found in the rubble. Nothing had been brought out intact except a few arrowheads, an ax head, two bone needles and a smashed copper bracelet. Most important, the early settlers had turned up a stone with a carved pattern that showed up on some Adena art. She and Carson had theorized it was used for ceremonial tattooing. The amateur excavators had also found fragments of skulls too small to piece together. If Mason Mound is similar to this one, but has not caved in...

  “Oh!” she cried and bent to see what had suddenly glinted in the sun.

  Something strange and shiny was standing upright, partly wedged in the grass in the center of the top of this mound, just above the cave-in site.

  * * *

  “Boss, we got us a problem outside.” The voice of Keith Simons interrupted Grant’s agonizing as he stood on the steps to his office, watching everyone get back to work. Leaning over the railing, Grant looked down at his forklift driver, who stood on the concrete floor below. Until recently, all three Simons brothers had worked here, but Jonas had been charged with ties to a meth lab and Grant had fired him. He thought he’d lose Keith and Ned over that, too. Ned had resigned in anger, but Keith had always been loyal. The guy was a big bruiser, and Grant sometimes thought of him as his bodyguard. “You’re not gonna like this,” Keith called up to him.

  Grant hurried down the stairs. “The reporter’s here?”

  Keith shook his big, bearded head. “Out on the road, picketers, about six of them with Save a Tree and Don’t Destroy Our Forests signs and the letter S in the words is a big dollar sign.”

  Grant swore under his breath. Picketers from out of state had been around before but not for quite a while. He really didn’t need this right now.

  “I’ll go out and talk to them,” he told Keith, keeping his voice calm. “That’s all we need if the newspaper reporter shows up. It will give him a second story, make us look bad, when I’ve been working with state lawmakers on green projects.”

  “I got your six, boss,” Keith assured him and joined him as Grant strode toward the big front doors. “One other thing,” Keith said. “This time it’s Green Tree people, and it looks like your ex-wife’s leading the pack.”

  * * *

  Kate knew better than to put her weight closer to the caved-in center of the mound’s top but she had to see what that shiny object was. Maybe something the early settlers of the area had dropped, for so many of these mounds had been dismantled by pioneers out of curiosity. Whatever was found inside had disappeared into attics and trunks—a few in museums—long ago. Or if stones had been used to shore up the burial sites, early settlers used them for the foundations of their houses and barns. Maybe it was a marker the professional excavators from the 1950s had left. But would the thing be so shiny if it was old?

  She hurried back down the mound and came up with the measuring wheel to see if she could use the long handle to reach the object. With it, leaning, stretching, she managed to pry it loose and slide it toward her over grass and weeds, but not close enough to safely pick it up.

  She could see it was a star, about two inches across. At first she thought it was a six-pointed Star of David, but it had five points—each one tipped in reddish-brown. As far as she could tell from this distance, nothing was written on it. What was it? Surely not an artifact. A Christmas-tree ornament? She decided she’d come back later with the fishing pole she’d seen in Tess’s garage, hook it, examine it. But who had left it here and why?

  It was illegal to insert objects into mounds and earthworks. The state of Ohio termed that vandalizing or desecration, a second-degree misdemeanor. Carson had told her about a couple of idiots who were adding their own fake artifacts to mounds, then trying to sell them as authentic. They had spent ninety days in jail and paid a $5,000 fine—for each mound. Maybe that was what had happened here. She’d have to ask him more about that.

  Kate hurried down the mound, vowing she’d be back for that star. But all she could think of now was that she’d tell Grant about it and ask him if she could at least check out the top of his mound to see if there was anything similar. It was an excuse to get a better look at Mason Mound. She was almost tempted to go there first, explain to him later. But she didn’t want to get him more upset than he already was over Paul’s terrible death. She hoped he’d be in a better mood today than the depths of despair she’d left him in yesterday.

  She tossed her equipment into her rental car and headed for the mill.

  * * *

  Grant was trying to keep his temper, but he could see Lacey was reveling in this chance to annoy him.

  “All the lumber mills in this state and you choose this one to picket,” Grant said as he faced down her little crowd of protesters walking back and forth with the placards just off his property line. “How nice that you wanted to see me again.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, stopping to face him with one hand on her hip. The clove-flavored gum she liked to chew hit him with its strong scent. “We rotate mills and factories where we protest. It was just your turn, and we had a place to stay with my parents, so it worked out. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Lacey had gained weight, her hair was blonder, and she wore a heck of a lot of makeup. She looked a far cry from the natural girl he’d once fallen in love with. Her companions were all pretty young, except for one guy who was keeping a good eye on her.

  “Hey, don’t just pick on her!” the man said, stepping forward. “We’re all in this together.”

  Lacey nodded and leaned her shoulder against his in a possessive move. Grant just shook his head. The man reminded him of a bouncer or a boxer, when most of the picketers seemed more millennial types. He was good-looking, though, and Lacey had always gone for that. Grant could see Lacey had this guy wrapped around her little finger for anything she wanted or needed.

  “This is Darren Ashley,” Lacey said when she saw Grant glaring at him. “He’s new to Green Tree, and he’s all-in.”

  “I’ll bet,” Grant said, but he just wanted this confrontation over—nicely, calmly. “Lacey, as you, above all people, know,” he said, ignoring the others, “the Masons have always replanted tracts of trees and cut carefully.”

  “Cut carefully, that’s a good one. Oh, I heard about Paul on the car radio, so I’m sorry for that. He was very talented.”

  “And he used our cut tree trunks for his art, so not even those were wasted, right?”

  “Never mind using your smarts and charm on me, Grant Mason. Been there, done that.”

  Darren Ashley nodded as if he thought Lacey was really handling this. Again, Grant fought to keep calm.

  “Well, all of you, enjoy yourself today. Knock yourselves out, but please don’t come on my property unless you intend to purchase some of our environmentally harvested products.”

  “And what about noise pollution, smoke pollution!” Lacey shouted when he started to walk away. That was when he knew she was here for a personal vendetta. Hell, she’d wanted out, and he’d ended up paying her well for leaving him.

  “By the way,” he added, turning back, “you and your friends should watch out for the big timber trucks that pull in, since you need to stand on the road.” Again, he started to walk away.

  “You’d like it if we got knocked into the ditch, wouldn’t you?” she yelled. He knew he was going to lose his temper, when he thought he’d handled things with reasonable control.

  He turned back yet again. Darren Ashley was giving him the finger, and Lacey’s little group was all eyes and ears. He fought hard not to leap at the guy and deck
him, but that wasn’t his way.

  “No, I wouldn’t like that, Lacey, because we’re all busy earning a living here, and I don’t have time to call the rescue squad for you. I’ve got a staff of eighteen men and three women on-site and others in the field who need to feed their families, and we don’t even have time to fish you and your signs out of a ditch.”

  “That’s another thing! You should hire at least half women! That’s half of the population, you know!” Lacey shouted.

  “If I see a qualified or interested woman, one who likes this beautiful area of the country and the good people who live here and doesn’t have pie-in-the-sky dreams of fancy places and exotic people, I hire her!” he yelled just as Kate pulled up, slowly, gawking at the picketers. Luckily, she drove her car between Grant and Lacey’s attack dog Darren, who had started toward him.

  Grant turned his back on the man and walked toward the mill, knowing Kate would figure out who was behind the Green Tree protest, knowing she’d sense how deeply upset he was. At least the picketers, including Lacey’s avenger, had gone back onto the berm of the road.

  But as Kate got out of her car, he saw she was upset, too. “Sorry about all that, Grant,” she told him, with a narrow-eyed glance at the protesters. She walked into the mill with him. “Is she out there—the blonde with the eye makeup?”

  He had to grin, the first time in a couple of days, at least. “Yeah,” he said, “sadly so. And I’m thinking the reporter the Chillicothe paper is sending out will be here any minute to cover that as well as Paul’s death.”

  “Any more news from Jace Miller about cause of death?”

  “Only that he has to consider it suspicious until he can prove otherwise.”

  “I didn’t come about that,” she said. “I hate to ask you this when things are so crazy but—”

  “Come on up to my office. Noisy in here again, so I hope it drowns out their chanting.”